With I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! back on our screens, you might have found a new fear being unlocked or perhaps an old one being reignited.

I mean, living in the UK, we don’t exactly come across giant huntsman spiders to be scared of on every corner. And we certainly don’t find ourselves dealing with whopper snacks to win some food in a Bushtucker Trial.

So, if you’ve recently started having fresh nightmares about the slithering things wrapping themselves around your body, there’s something you might want to avoid.

That’s because if you drop a Google Maps pin on Snake Island while you’re browsing random destinations, a rather frightening thing happens.

Oh yeah, that’s a real place said to be home to around 4,000 of the world’s deadliest snakes. And with an area of just 106 acres, that works out at between three and five of the things per square metre.

That’s a lotta snakes.

Critically endangered golden lancehead vipers also only live on Ilha da Queimada Grande, hence its not so friendly Snake Island nickname.

While the species primarily scrans on birds, their potent venom can be lethal to us humans, with the possibility to kill us in just an hour.

It’s not your typical view (Google Maps)

So, it’s hardly a disappointment that people aren’t allowed to visit the place for the sake of both them and the creatures – because who wants their flesh melted by a snake?

But the one way you can kind of pay a visit is of course by playing about on Google Maps.

Go on, admit it, you’re guilty of killing some time or procrastinating a bit by dropping pins on random places and having a wander around.

And if you drop a pin on Snake Island you might end up jumping at your screen, so maybe save it for a work from home procrastination session rather than in the office.

If you’ve done it, you’ve got to admit it can be a bit of a shock initially but you’d really have to be absolutely terrified of snakes to be scared just looking at it.

Boo! (Google Maps)

You’ve got to laugh really. Total respect to the person editing a giant image of a snake onto a road in the middle of the island.

And it looks like they’re pros at this point, judging by their YouTube channel, as they’ve got plenty of videos like this.

How did they do it, you may be asking? Well, Google Maps has a nifty feature that allows you to upload 360 degree images with Street View Studio.

The real snakes, however, ended up on Quiemada Grande thousands of years ago following the end of the last ice age, as the rising sea levels disconnected the island from Brazil’s mainland.

The story behind the infamous Snake Island and how so many of the deadliest predators ended up concentrated in the same place has been explained.

Brazil isn’t short of tropical locations and islands, but Ilha de Queimada Grande, which is 90 miles off the coast of São Paulo is not one that you’d probably be looking to visit.

Locals know to steer clear of the area, and are likely thankful that the 106-acre island is so far out at sea, where approximately 4,000 highly venomous species of snake wait to feast on visiting animals.

The dangerous yet critically endangered venomous golden lancehead inhabit the island, featuring a fatal venom that can kill humans within an hour after entering the bloodstream.

A YouTuber even managed to evade authorities and sneak his way onto the island in 2023, and luckily made it out alive without encountering any of the deadly predators.

He took a long boat ride and ventured to the famous lighthouse on the island, all while wearing some hard metal armour to protect himself from any attacks.

But why is the island so heavily populated with particularly dangerous snakes?

Golden lancehead vipers are one of the deadliest species of snakes in the world, so much so that nobody lives on the island anymore.

From 1909 to the 1920s, people did live there to run its lighthouse, but a tale tells that the last lighthouse keeper and his family were killed when a load of snakes made their way into their house through the windows.

But the reality of it is that Ilha de Queimada Grande’s dense population of snakes started about 11,000 years ago, according to Smithsonian Magazine.

When sea levels rose to isolate the island from mainland Brazil, the snakes on the island, believed to be jararaca snakes, evolved differently to their mainland relatives.

This is because snakes left on the island had no ground level predators, so they they could reproduce rapidly, though having no predators meant they also had no ground level prey, so to eat, the snakes slithered upward and preyed on migratory birds that would seasonally visit the island.

Snakes here have evolved to have some of the deadliest venom in the world (9 News)

Usually, snakes stalk and then bite their prey, coming back after their venom had taken effect.

Golden lancehead vipers can’t track birds, so their venom evolved to be very potent and efficient, estimated to be three to five times stronger than snakes on the mainland.

It is capable of killing prey almost instantly.

It is estimated that the island is so heavily populated with snakes that there’s a snake for every square metre in certain areas, with a bite from a golden lancehead carrying a seven percent chance of death.

If it doesn’t do that, it can cause kidney failure, necrosis of muscular tissue, brain hemorrhaging and intestinal bleeding.

So yeah, Snake Island is somewhere to steer clear of then.